The first black-type stakes winner for Gainesway’s freshman sire To Honor and Serve was served up with a Latin flavor when his juvenile son Steps to Heaven won the Oct. 2 Clásico Fernández at Hipódromo Presidente Remón in Panama.
Fundacion Tresdel purchased the chestnut colt for $20,000 at this year’s OBS April sale of 2-year-olds. Trained by Odín Londoño for owner Eric Antonio Delvalle’s Stud El Águila, and ridden by Lorenzo Lezcano, Steps to Heaven maintained his undefeated record by winning the six-furlong event by four lengths in 1:12.30.
Bred by Machmer Hall in Kentucky, Steps to Heaven is out of the Devil’s Bag mare Aunt Beth, a half-sister to Grade 2 stakes winner Redding Colliery (by Mineshaft) and to stakes winner Joopy Doopy (by Gilded Time).
A multiple Grade 1-winning son of Bernardini, 8-year-old To Honor and Serve is a full brother to Grade 1 winner Angela Renee out of the stakes-winning Deputy Minister mare Pilfer.